The present invention relates to the field of garage doors. More specifically, the present invention relates to raised panel door sections for overhead garage doors.
A typical overhead garage door is constructed from a plurality of door sections, which are hinged together and supported from a track system with rollers attached to opposite ends of the door sections. The rollers generally allow the door to be moved from a vertically oriented closed position to a substantially horizontal open position. Electrically powered garage door openers are often used with the overhead garage door so that a driver may conveniently open and close the door from within a vehicle.
With regard to residential applications, an overhead garage door is generally either eight or sixteen feet wide. Typically, such a door includes four horizontally oriented door sections, each of which is about eight or sixteen feet wide and twenty-one inches high. For example, a single car residential garage may have an eight foot wide by seven foot high door. Likewise, a two car residential garage may have a single sixteen foot wide door by seven foot high door or two eight foot wide by seven foot high doors.
The earliest overhead garage doors were fabricated from wood. Unfortunately, wood overhead garage doors are costly to maintain. For example, the wood is adversely affected by the elements. Specifically, the sun, rain, snow, varying temperatures, and so forth will degrade the finish of the wood and eventually cause the wood to warp, split, or rot. Consequently, a wood overhead garage door should be re-sealed or re-painted every couple of years to maintain the aesthetic appearance and integrity of the wood overhead garage door. This labor intensive and costly maintenance is highly undesirable to the typical homeowner.
In addition, insects, such as termites and carpenter ants, frequently attack the wood causing significant damage. Accordingly, the use of a wood overhead garage door necessitates frequent inspections and treatment for insect damage. Again, this is a highly undesirable situation to the homeowner in terms of labor and cost. For these reasons, traditional wood overhead garage doors are declining in popularity, and homeowners are opting for longer-lasting, low-maintenance doors made of steel or plastic.
Like the wood overhead garage doors, steel overhead garage doors are constructed from a plurality of door sections. However, the door sections are made of sheet metal typically embossed to give it a wood grain appearance. The embossed sheet metal is then either stamped with a raised panel design or made directly into flush door sections. The sheet metal door section may be uninsulated. Alternatively, a layer of insulation may be added inside the frame of the sheet metal door section with or without a sheet metal layer on the interior of the door to protect the insulation and add strength to the door section. Because the steel overhead garage doors are made of sheet metal that has been galvanized, primed, and painted with at least one coat of finish paint, they require very little maintenance.
Unfortunately, some steel overhead garage doors suffer from problems associated with insufficient rigidity. In particular, over time a steel overhead garage door may bow or warp along a longitudinal dimension, i.e., width, of the door section. If enough bowing occurs, the sheet metal layer may begin to tear, the rollers of the door section may begin to repeatedly fall out of the door tracks, or the hardware components, such as the rollers, connection points, springs, or the tracks could fail causing property damage and/or injury.
In addition to possible mechanical problems associated with a traditional steel overhead garage door, the steel overhead garage door also suffers from problems associated with aesthetic appearance. For example, traditional seven foot high raised panel doors typically have a horizontally oriented, rectangular raised panel design stamped on four twenty-one inch door sections. As steel overhead garage doors have flooded the industry, a need has arisen for a deviation from existing garage door designs. That is, garage door manufacturers, architects, builders, and homeowners desire a garage door that looks different from the traditional raised panel steel garage doors inundating the market. However, in order to gain acceptance in the industry, a steel garage door cannot simply be different in appearance, it should also be cost effective to produce so that it may be competitively priced.
Thus, what is needed is a raised panel door section for an overhead garage door that is cost effective to produce, durable, low maintenance, impervious to weather and insects, and has an appearance that differs from traditional steel garage door sections.
It is an advantage of the present invention that a raised panel door section for an overhead garage door is provided.
It is another advantage of the present invention that a raised panel door section is provided to form an aesthetically pleasing overhead garage door.
It is another advantage of the present invention that a raised panel door section is provided that is structurally sound and requires little maintenance.
Yet another advantage of the present invention is that an automated method is provided for cost-effectively producing a sheet metal layer used to form the raised panel door section of the overhead garage door.
The above and other advantages of the present invention are carried out in one form by a raised panel door section for an overhead garage door. The raised panel door section includes a sheet metal layer having an outer surface and an inner surface. The sheet metal layer is embossed to produce a raised panel design by an automated process that selects one of a first die set and a second die set in response to a predetermined embossment style, installs the selected one of the first and second die sets into an embossing press, and embosses the sheet metal layer with the predetermined embossment style. The raised panel door section further includes an insulating foam board having a first side coupled to the inner surface of the sheet metal layer, and a second side having a steel laminate backing. End support members are coupled to first and second lateral edges of the sheet metal layer.
The above and other advantages of the present invention are carried out in another form by an automated method for producing a sheet metal layer having a predetermined embossment style, the sheet metal layer being used to form a raised panel door section of an overhead garage door. The automated method calls for selecting one of a first die set and a second die set in response to the predetermined embossment style. The predetermined embossment style is one of a horizontal raised panel design, a vertical raised panel design, and a horizontal long raised panel design. The first die set is configured to produce the horizontal and vertical raised panel designs, and the second die set is configured to produce the horizontal long raised panel design. The method further calls for installing the selected one of the first and second die sets into an embossing press using an automated conveyer, transferring sheet metal stock into the embossing press, embossing the sheet metal stock with the predetermined embossment style using the selected one of the first and second die sets, and producing a tongue portion on a first longitudinal edge and a groove portion on a second longitudinal edge of the embossed sheet metal stock to form the sheet metal layer.
The above and other advantages of the present invention are carried out in yet another form by an overhead garage door including first, second, and third raised panel door sections, each having a height of substantially twenty-eight inches. Each of the first, second, and third door sections includes a sheet metal layer having an outer surface and an inner surface. The sheet metal layer is embossed to produce a predetermined vertical raised panel design having an embossment height of approximately twenty inches. The sheet metal layer is embossed by an automated process that selects one of a first die set and a second die set in response to the predetermined vertical raised panel design, installs the selected one of the first and second die sets into an embossing press, and embosses the sheet metal layer with the predetermined vertical raised panel design. An insulating foam board has a first side coupled to the inner surface of the sheet metal layer, and a second side having a steel laminate backing. End support members are coupled to first and second lateral edges of the sheet metal layer. The first, second, and third door sections function cooperatively to yield an overall height of the overhead garage door of substantially eighty-four inches, and the vertical raised panel designs of the first, second, and third door section are arranged in three aligned rows.